i found this on the gentoo wiki. it isnt argueing for or against either distro, it just shows how to do similar things in each for people that like to try different distros (like me). please excuse all the 'edit' tags, it is copied from a wiki.
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Converting_from_or_to_Debian
Introduction
This page is supposed to show people coming from or going to Debian how some things compare in the 2 distros. It's a pragmatic comparison and doesn't judge which one is better.
This is very incomplete. [edit] Package management
Where Gentoo has portage and emerge, Debian has, among others, apt. This is to show you how you use either to handle updates, installs, and so forth. [edit] Updating package database on your system
Gentoo:
emerge --sync
Debian:
apt-get update
[edit] Updating packages on your system
Updating all packages, only pretending the operation: [edit] Gentoo
emerge --deep --update --pretend world
[edit] Debian
apt-get upgrade --simulate
Update a particular package:
emerge --update package1 package2 apt-get install package1 package2
[edit] Installing packages [edit] Gentoo
emerge package1 package2
[edit] Debian
apt-get install package1 package2
Debian source compile:
apt-get build-dep package1 apt-get source package1
(optional: customize the build by modifying the debian/rules makefile) (or set environmental variables like DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS) (note that this will make your bug reports invalid to the maintainer)
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b dpkg -i generatedpackagename
[edit] Reinstall a particular package [edit] Gentoo
emerge --oneshot package1 package2
[edit] Debian
apt-get install --reinstall package1 package2
Note: You rarely need to reinstall a package on Debian [edit] Searching package database
To search the package names and descriptions:
emerge --searchdesc searchword
Note: on gentoo, it's actually much better to install and use the esearch package to do search
apt-cache search searchword
Both emerge and apt-cache search support regular expressions.
To get the long package information on Debian (searching only in package names):
apt-cache search --full --names-only searchword
[edit] Removing packages
emerge --unmerge package1 package2
apt-get remove package1 package2
or to remove along with all configuration files
apt-get remove --purge package1 package2
[edit] Only downloading packages
This can be useful e.g. if you're on a dial-up connection and want to download everything first and install later.
emerge --fetchonly package1 package2
apt-get install --download-only package1 package2
[edit] Cleaning up downloaded packages
Compressed packages that were downloaded for installation can easily consume gigs of hdd space.
Gentoo:
rm -rf /usr/portage/distfiles/*
Debian:
apt-get clean
Debian: Only remove outdated packages:
apt-get autoclean
Gentoo: Cleaning temporary files from emerging packages:
rm -rf /var/tmp/portage/*
[edit] GUI frontends for package management
Gentoo: kuroo, porthole (both are masked)
Debian: aptitude, dselect (both ncurses based), synaptic (gtk) [edit] Reverse dependencies
Reverse dependencies are a major drawback of Gentoo's current portage implementation: It does not take care of them at all at the moment. This means that you can uninstall packages needed by others without being warned about it. E.g. you can remove the x server package without portage warning you that kde (which you have installed as well) depends on it. This way you can actually break your entire system (e.g. by removing glibc).
revdep-rebuild can fix broken dependencies broken by emerge --depclean.
In Debian, reverse dependencies are taken care of by dpkg. [edit] Runlevel & Initscripts
Runlevels work pretty conventionally on Debian. On Gentoo, they are a bit different. [edit] Directories and files
In Debian runlevels are named conventionally (0-6 and S). They are represented by directories in /etc/ called rc*.d.
* /etc/rc0.d * /etc/rc1.d * /etc/rcS.d * /etc/rc2.d * /etc/rc3.d * /etc/rc4.d * /etc/rc5.d * /etc/rc6.d
In Gentoo, runlevels have the same names, but these are mapped to more self explanatory ones (in /etc/inittab): "boot", "default", "nonetwork", with the option to add more. The directories that represent them are in /etc/runlevels/:
* /etc/runlevels/boot * /etc/runlevels/default * /etc/runlevels/nonetwork
In Gentoo, if a service is not explicitly started in a runlevel, it is stopped when switching to that runlevel! There is no explicit stopping of runlevels as in Debian (/etc/rc?.d/K??service).
In both Debian and Gentoo, which things are started (and stopped) in which runlevels is controlled by links in the runlevel directories to scripts in /etc/init.d/, e.g.: Code: gentoo $ ls -l /etc/runlevels/boot/hostname
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Mar 25 2004 /etc/runlevels/boot/hostname -> /etc/init.d/hostname
Code: debian $ ls -l rcS.d/S40hostname.sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 2004-11-07 00:19 rcS.d/S40hostname.sh -> ../init.d/hostname.sh
[edit] Runlevel management: rc-update, update-rc.d
To manage which things to start in which runlevels, use the following commands: [edit] Gentoo
rc-update
To add the cupsd to the default runlevel, do:
rc-update add cupsd default
To remove alsasound from the boot runlevel, do:
rc-update del alsasound boot
Also see this wiki page about gentoo runlevel management with rc-update [edit] Debian
update-rc.d
Configure cupsd to be started in runlevels 2, 3, 4, 5, and stopped in 0, 1, 6, with sequence code 20:
update-rc.d cupsd start 20 2 3 4 5 . stop 20 0 1 6 .
or simply:
update-rc.d cupsd defaults
Remove cupsd from all runlevels:
update-rc.d -f cupsd remove
[edit] Config Files [edit] /etc/make.conf and use flags
While in gentoo there are a large number of configuration files which exist to control the behaviour of the package management system, there are comparatively fewer in Debian, as there is no need to dictate how to compile software which is downloaded and tweak / alter this purpose. In gentoo, the file /etc/make.conf is used for much configuration; this includes USE flags, which influence which elements of packages are compiled, and which libraries to build support for - common USE flags (USE or -USE to specifically negate support) include 'gtk gnome' for gnome users (and a corresponding -qt -kde -arts) and 'qt kde arts' for kde users. A gentoo user's complete set of use flags may look something like this:
USE="-kde -arts -qt xv truetype bluetooth crypt slang readline gpm berkdb mmx gdbm tcpd pam libwww ssl nls ethereal perl python esd gif imlib sdl oggvorbis mpeg gnome gtk X motif opengl avi png tiff nptl pcmcia nptl ldap eds" [edit] arch and repositories
Also in /etc/make.conf is the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS setting, with (for an X86-based processor) two settings, x86 for stabler packages, and ~x86 for bleeding edge packages. In debian, setting this is slightly more complicated, and is accomplished by setting different 'repositories' in /etc/apt/sources.list - along with which 'tree' to use for packages; in debian, these are stable, testing, and unstable. An /etc/apt/sources.list file for a debian testing user may look something like this:
deb http://mirrors.kernel.org/debian testing main non-free contrib deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat testing main deb http://security.debian.org testing/updates main contrib non-free
Alternatively, /etc/apt/sources.list can contain any number of repositories for any trees, and a default tree (this can be overridden using the -t switch on the command line) in /etc/apt/apt.conf:
APT::Default-Release "testing";
Per-package settings go in /etc/apt/preferences, somewhat like Gentoo's /etc/portage/package.keywords. [edit] network
To configure your ethernet interfaces, take a look at: [edit] Gentoo File: /etc/conf.d/net
# This is basically the ifconfig argument without the ifconfig $iface iface_eth0="192.168.0.1 broadcast 192.168.0.255 netmask 255.255.255.0" gateway="192.168.0.1"
[edit] Debian File: /etc/network/interfaces
auto eth0 iface eth0 inet static address 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255 # etc.
[edit] X
As of now, Debian still uses XFree86 4.3 in the sarge release. You can use the .deb-configuration script to get a basic /etc/X11/XF86Config-4:
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
-------------------- No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical. ~ Niels Bohr
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